Thousands of users have come together on a forum to express their angers and concerns over the move.

Nintendo have responded to the complaints with a support document outlining their pixel policies, and have said; “Small numbers of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect.”

Although the move has upset customers of the new technology gaming system, Nintendo are indeed right, in that the screen manufacturers who produce LCD panels for them, do not consider dead pixels to be a fault. This is because, these are an anomaly, or feature of the technology used to produce the displays.

LCD screens do not display images in the same way the old CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors used to. Instead they use pixels, and build the image on the screen with an array of dots. The number of dots on the screen determines the screen's resolution. Modern screens run at very high resolutions, such as 1920x1080 and more recently whopping resolutions of 3840X2160 and above. The latter option has nearly 9 million pixels, or tiny lights which make up the display.

Because of the sheer amount of dots (lights/pixels) used, there is a pretty high chance of one or more of them failing either at the time of manufacture or shortly thereafter. LCD screens can also be affected by extremes of temperature which can later cause pixels to stick or fail.

Whilst there are some options to unstick a stuck pixel, generally speaking pixel faults are not repairable. As the manufacturer of the display (e.g. Samsung, LG, AUO, Innolux, BoeHydis, Sharp etc), does not recognise pixel faults as a warranty issue, this leaves suppliers, like Nintendo with no option but to follow suit.

As such, customers who wish to swap their devices with Nintento on experiencing pixel faults will get no support.

Here at laptop-lcd-screen, we're in the same situation with the LCD manufacturers, so to protect our clients, we buy class I screens, which carry an extended 2 year warranty, that covers screens with more than 3 pixel faults, (and these higher grade screens are much less likely to exhibit pixel anomalies). For users unhappy with a screen that has less than 3 pixel anomalies, we will also accept these displays back for refund, however we are unable to replace them.